OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

No, mainly because it only contained terrible copy

they keep emailing me

http://www.pastemagazine.com/

ppl write about some crappy miley song like it's fuckin ulysses

this is great

Oh you mean serious literature for serious adult men? Burrrrrrn

That'd be like DeLillo

The way we tend to define this issue as revanchist rock music vs raunchy pop music kinda gets in the way, and makes it seem like the tension of ideas only exists in this extreme strawman form, as if the choice is between only Black Keys or Miley, or only one kind of value system or the other, in fixed opposition. Whereas in truth we're all pretty discriminatory in a multitude of different ways.

I think Wilson gets at this when he talks about his distaste for The Libertines, and the fact that often what we dislike most is stuff that we can project our own self-loathing onto.

I find the semi-articulated value systems behind (e.g.) both celebrations and criticisms of tumblr&b more interesting than those of Miley fans vs Miley haters or etc.

Tim F sharp as usual. I think my will to participate in thought experiments of overcoming my own most deep musical prejudices is just waning lately, i.e. I am becoming old. I've come a long way but Im tired now.

I'm less interested in the "check your privilege bias" side of things per se than I am in thinking about what kind of criticism we need to see i.e. what arguments are actually worth having at this point, what sounds are worth defending and on what basis, what lines are worth drawing.

My pet bugbear with all of this is that the debate gets reduced to a fight over what we can or should listen to, rather than a fight over what's worth saying about what we listen to.

Seriously though, whether a critic likes X or Y is basically of zero interest to me if they're a boring writer, and if they're a good writer then I'm likely to find their taste interesting no matter what X or Y happens to be.

tim otm but the debate is never going to happen on a purely abstract level, though the trouble with concrete examples is exactly what we've just seen - katherine used miley as an example, a good one to make a particular point, and then the thread turned into miley cyrus c/d.

the check-your-privilege side of things is very relevant to poptimism imo (you could use miley as an example for both sides here!) but really needs to exist in conjunction with a musical criticism - my bugbear about thinkpiece culture w/r/t pop songs is that it's so often done by columnists who may be good writers or have important thoughts on race or gender etc etc, but don't have much knowledge of pop music. how many miley thinkpieces deigned to even mention her music last year? or when sinéad waded in, how many mentioned her music? and an alarming amount of the latest round of sexualisation-in-the-music-industry thinkpieces apparently have no knowledge of anything that happened pre-rihanna.

i don't want to underestimate how much the r*ckism/poptimism argument STILL needs to be made, again and again, regardless of how over-it ilm is, because certain assumptions remain so pervasive, but as tim says at heart it's about good vs bad writing. but it needs a lot more specificity...

eg

what arguments are actually worth having at this point, what sounds are worth defending and on what basis, what lines are worth drawing.

well...what are your answers to these qs?

also have you actually seen anything that defends tumblr&b-as-tumblr&b? because i have not. only seen an endless stream of individual acts hyped up but little that defends the sound or scene above, say, blue-collar r&b.

"Tumblr&b"

lol at thinking music journalism is important in any way and that people actually care about it

imagine caring about "poptimism" or "rockism" and actually thinking that those ideas mean anything to anyone in the world outside of ILX.

Lex, the argument doesn't need to be made. People have enough to worry about already in their lives without the pressure of having to think "oooh, I dismissed a pop record, am I evil"

everyone's a critic critic

it wasn't even really a thought experiment, it is literally just what happens when you tell people in the real world, say people you might meet at a party or in a bar or at work, that you write about pop music (or listen to pop music in non-ironic fashion, for the "music writing doesn't matter" crowd.) obviously this is heavily self-selecting but it is self-selecting for anyone who thinks these people who will then judge you hard are strawmen. if miley isn't a good example justin bieber would work, or katy perry, or gaga. (beyonce isn't a great example, since her album is the "call me maybe" of its year -- i.e. major pop monocultural event that even the snobbiest of music snobs won't fault you for earnestly liking.)

beyoncé's also reached that point where she's enough of a cultural behemoth AND has been around long enough to have "paid her dues" such that, like kylie in the uk, most people just accept her presence

lol at thinking music journalism is important in any way and that people actually care about it

― online hardman, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 7:25 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

weren't you stressing on here a while back about whether ppl liked your music writing and whether you'd be able to start getting paid off it

well, yeah, it'd be nice to get paid for something I do in my spare time. I don't expect anyone IRL to actually care about it though.

Btw, my ire is aimed at thinkpiecy stuff

lol at thinking music journalism is important in any way and that people actually care about it

― online hardman, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 7:25 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

weren't you stressing on here a while back about whether ppl liked your music writing and whether you'd be able to start getting paid off it

Thank you for the reveal

Katherine, what do you care what these dumbass ppl think?

because they're not "dumbass people" but they're friends, relatives, coworkers, smart people, average people, all sorts of people, at least some of whose opinions probably matter to you?

Sorry I didn't mean we shouldn't talk about miley, and she's probably a bad example of what I meant because she's so unique, and reactions to her (on all sides) cannot be reduced to "manufactured pop, would you kick with y/n" She's pretty fascinating of her own accord, as are reactions to her.

My point was more that acting as this debate is solely about chart pop vs authentic rock presents the issue only at its most extreme, ossified form. I would like to see examinations of these issues in more subtle settings where these ideas are impregnated but not explicated.

Which leads me to:

also have you actually seen anything that defends tumblr&b-as-tumblr&b? because i have not. only seen an endless stream of individual acts hyped up but little that defends the sound or scene above, say, blue-collar r&b.

No I haven't! Exactly! It's just implied by the hype without being stated. Which is why I think it's worth unpacking.

That said Lex you're right that the moment specific artists are named it becomes about the artist rather than the thought process. Which is precisely my point: there are so many reasons to like or dislike a specific artist (see Boney Joan Rule) that it's misleading and ultimately not useful to make the argument about the artist per se - what needs to be addressed are the terms in which things are celebrated or dismissed, that's where the specificity of thought is.

because they're not "dumbass people" but they're friends, relatives, coworkers, smart people, average people, all sorts of people, at least some of whose opinions probably matter to you?

― katherine, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 5:21 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The question remains, do we really need a New York Times thinkpiece so we can handle ourselves in situations where "The Black Keys fucking suck, bruh" would work just fine?

basically ppl holding up bores like the black keys as some ideal of real music and ppl write about some crappy miley song like it's fuckin ulysses are both equally annoying

yup

Except one, as succinctly demonstrated above, is treated with far more vitriol and hyperbole than the other, so any pretence at parity immediately goes out the window.

y'all need some lessons on being smug

http://media.timeout.com/images/resizeBestFit/100267107/660/370/image.jpg

That's the expression I've mastered whenever people I know claim that Great Art is what lasts forever. One of our worst qualities as a culture is seriousness, which often scans as strained attempts at seriousness. To say "I don't care whether I like this song next week" is a signal to these people that You're Not Serious.

what is the nytimes piece and responses that everybody is talking about anyway? it's lost way above the fold.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/magazine/the-pernicious-rise-of-poptimism.html?_r=0

Btw it's twice now I've seen professing to like Bangerz as a gesture of whatever, which raises Alfred to "I don't care if I like this at all" and is p irritating tbh

huh?

Sorry. Like: saying I don't care if I like something next week is one thing, saying I like something irrespective of whether I actually do or not is another. A couple of times, counting upthread, ppl've used "liking" Bangerz as a tool to say "Hi I love pop, so there." Seems oddly specific

I'm doing that at all. I'm citing one of the more pernicious anti-pop arguments used by the people katherine describes.

Yeah I didn't think you were

*I'm NOT doing that all

Except one, as succinctly demonstrated above, is treated with far more vitriol and hyperbole than the other, so any pretence at parity immediately goes out the window.

― tsrobodo, Wednesday, 16 April 2014 11:41 (1 hour ago) Permalink

Well tbf one of them is almost inescapable and the other one is highly escapable.

lol at the thought that miley is anywhere remotely near 'unescapable'

back maybe 16 years ago britney was sort of the same cultural signifier miley is today. i'll rep for brit's stuff as more straight ahead enjoyable, but the same sort of discourse was going on, where unironic, nonpervy enjoyment of brit's music _as such_ was a really divisive thing to profess. and it was exactly this odd specificity, because so many, in general, cultural anxieties about art and taste were all projected into this one flashpoint of debate.

so if i said "i don't like britney, of course, but xtina has some real pipes" that would be an acceptable opinion. or if i said "mandy moore has some surprisingly good songwriting" that would be ok too (because for the most part she didn't [still rep for "wanna be with you" tho], but nobody i was talking to would know that!). but you couldn't just say "...baby one more time" was a great song without inspiring livid outrage.

lol at the thought that miley is anywhere remotely near 'unescapable'

― balls, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 9:46 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well people in the office lunchroom talk about her, she's in the free subway newspapers all the time, magazines, tv, etc. I can't even remember what the Black Keys look like. I can't remember the melody of a single Black Keys song.

I get facebook or youtube suggestions every few days about the latest parody-of-a-parody of wrecking ball

Look Hurting if you choose to engage w/current culture at all that's on you

yeah just don't sit with those people in the lunchroom if you don't wanna talk about bangerz

thx

Well people in the office lunchroom talk about her, she's in the free subway newspapers all the time, magazines, tv, etc. I can't even remember what the Black Keys look like. I can't remember the melody of a single Black Keys song.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/why-do-all-these-homosexuals-keep-sucking-my-cock,11150/

I've done a pretty good job escaping both Miley and Black Keys with very little effort/intent. And I still haven't heard a note from the latest Beyonce; did it get radio play? However, I can't escape Katy Perry, Pink, Lorde, Rihanna and Lady Gaga's "Applause." These are the top 40 acts I hear everywhere, whether I want to or not.

Well yeah if you want to get specific, Miley was more inescapable around the time of that VMA thing, less so right now.

I can't escape people talking about people talking about people talking about Miley, though.

everyone's a critic critic

― estela, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 2:29 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

in 2014 if you're 'overexposed' to any kind of media it's a result of yr own choices, everything is very very avoidable, ed sullivan died a long time ago

I can't escape people talking about people talking about people talking about Miley, though.

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, April 16, 2014 10:14 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink